16 miles and a Beach to Beacon RR

Saturday was the 17th annual Beach to Beacon 10k in Cape Elizabeth, and for the 7th year in a row, I was set to toe the starting line with about 6,500 other people and a stacked field of elites (including Meb and Shalane!!!).

The only problem is that I also had 16 miles on the schedule for Saturday....

After a long chat with my co-worker who is training for the same September 50k as I am, I decided to check out how far it was from my house to the start, and wouldn't ya know it was just over 10 miles. So my plan was set in motion.

The night before my race included a trip to the Sierra Nevada Beer Camp stop that was happening in Maine. I was the designated driver for the evening, but I still enjoyed several of the collaboration beers that were featured as well as some from a lot of our local breweries (most of the breweries featured in their collaboration series we will never see in Maine, so I had to take advantage). The event ran from 5-10, and being the responsible runner that I am, I stopped drinking around 7:30 or 8 and drank several Nalgene's of water before we left.

Fast forward about 6 hours and my alarm was blaring at 5 a.m. I snoozed once and then got up to get ready for my long run and race.

I let DBF off the hook for this race as he imbibed many more beers than I did, and his dad was in town, so he slept right through me getting ready...almost.

After grabbing a snack and filling up my hydration pack, I headed out the door. As soon as I shut the locked door behind me, I realized I had forgotten my bib and my keys inside the house so I had to wake DBF up to let me back in. I felt a little guilty until I found out he went back to sleep until just after I finished the race.

Once I had grabbed my bib, I was finally on my way around 5:40--a little later than I wanted, but it worked out.

The first couple of miles of the run were a little rough because I was stilly trying to wake up, but the 10 miles to the race was pretty uneventful. I was going slow because I wanted to have the energy to try to run under an hour for the 10k (normally, this would not be a problem, but with the added 10 miles, I wanted to be safe).

I got to the starting area around 7:30 and stretched out a little before heading to the line.

Side note: I really hate the start of this race, there are so many people and the majority of them are really bad at self-seeding, so you end up passing a ton of people at the start.

The wheel chair racers went off around 7:45 and after about 20 minutes of waiting, it was our turn.

I won't bore you too much with details about the race, because it was pretty uneventful. I was running right about where I wanted to for the first three miles, and then I bonked hard. I did finish, but I was much slower than I wanted to be at about 1:10 (for perspective, I finished in 48:00 last year and have never been over an hour in the 7 years I've run it).

The funniest part of my race was that I had three people run by me and say, "Hey! I saw you running in Portland, how far did you run to get here?!" and when I told them 10 miles, they were all pretty surprised. As I was running to get to the race, I was wondering how many people were headed to the race because traffic was really heavy for Portland at 5:40 on a Saturday morning, usually I'm the only one on the road.

I didn't get much of a run in yesterday, my schedule called for an hour, but I only ended up doing about 2 miles. My SI joint was out of place, but because I've been dealing with this issue my whole life (born with a genetic hip problem that causes it) I knew how to pop it back in. It being out just means I have to be better about doing my PT exercises. I am going to try to do an hour today and see how it feels.

I've got 24 on tap for this Saturday (last week was a cutback week), with a 9 mile trail race on Sunday. A little nervous about that combo....

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